The generation and rendering of high end graphics often involves the movement of large quantities of data. Frequently the data is stored in a server, from which it may be accessed by users at computer workstations (or, more generally, at computing devices) via a network. Once the data is received at the computing device, the graphics may be displayed on an attached video monitor. In many cases the video monitor is physically separate and has been conventionally attached to the computing device via an analog interface, such as a video graphics array (VGA) interface, or a digital interface such as a digital visual interface (DVI). In a typical configuration, an interface in the computing device is connected to a compatible interface in the video monitor via an interstitial connector, such as a cable.
In an alternative configuration, the computing device may incorporate a video monitor. An example of this configuration is a laptop computer in which the video monitor is a component in the physical computing device unit. Whether the video monitor is physically incorporated within the computing device or is a physically separate device, the video monitor may or may not have touch screen capability.
Display Port is a digital interface standard, which enables a computing device to send graphics and video data to a video monitor, or multimedia display device, via a Display Port interface. In this regard, the Display Port interface standard may describe a point-to-point interface, which is capable of transmitting data from a device connected at one end of a connecting cable to a device connected at the other end of the connecting cable. The graphics and/or video data communicated across the Display Port interface may be sent in mini-packets as described in applicable standards. The mini-packets may contain information comprising instructions on how to render the graphics and/or video data on the video display screen, for example. The mini-packets may be sent via a plurality of data paths referred to as “lanes”. In an exemplary Display Port interface, there may be four (4) such lanes.
In addition to supporting unidirectional data traffic from the computing device to the computer monitor (or other attached video display device), the Display Port standard may also enable the bidirectional transfer of data. For example, the Display Port standard may allow for the exchange of encryption keys to enable the transfer of encrypted digital data across the Display Port interface. This capability may enable protection of digital content transferred across the Display Port interface.
Digital video may require high data rates. The data rate for digital video may be determined based on the number of bits utilized to display each picture element (pixel) in an image frame (frame), the number of pixels in a frame, the number of frames displayed per second. For example, transmission of a progressively scanned 1920×1080 pixel high definition television (HDTV) 24-bit color image at a frame rate of 30 frames/s may require a data rate in excess of 1 billion bits/s.
Many video applications utilize compressed data. Data compression enables a reduction in the quantity of data utilized to represent video images. The data may be compressed at the source end (for example a system, which may generate video data or retrieve video data) and decompressed at the destination end (for example a system, which may enable the display and/or rendering of video data). Exemplary data compression methods utilized for video compression include run length encoding (RLE) and discrete cosine transform (DCT). Standards which utilize video compression include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.261, H.262, H.263 and H.264. Other methods for data compression include Huffman coding, Shannon-Fano coding and Fibonacci coding.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.